It’s the iPhone … Stupid !

A few of us were having a brainstorm session recently regarding the ICA client, mobility and device support, inevitably the discussion led to the topic of competing priorities, limited resources, and business cases. Al Granville ( sometimes affectionately referred to as the ” suit ” in the blogosphere ) is the Product Manager for the ICA client and has the enviable position of driving what features and functions get included ( and which ones don’t ). Nowadays you can’t talk about mobility without the topic of support for the iPhone and where that fits versus all the other priorities. If you also want Citrix iPhone support please place your vote and tell us your use case here. Typically this analysis means doing a market analysis, talking to customers and developing a business case comparing all the alternatives and determining the ROI. During this discussion however, Al made the profound statement that maybe in this situation the business case simply needs to say … it’s the iPhone.. Stupid !

This brings up a really interesting point that IT also seems to be dealing with lately, that is what is the value of new and “cool ” and do you spend resources to enable these technologies. It could be the iPhone or it could be Web 2.0 collaboration tools or desktop video conferencing, whatever. Sometimes it’s straight forward to put an ROI and business case together, however quantifying the value of “cool” is subjective at best. Apple as the best example has done a superb job proving that elegant design, user experience, and “cool ” is a profitable business model. This certainly has proven to be the case in the consumer world, but it’s also evident that this is impacting the business IT world as well, at least from the perspective of user expectations. I am interested to know if this phenomena is also impacting IT’s decision process for implementing new projects.

How does your organization deal with all the new and cool user requests ?

20 Comments

Well for starters what would be REALLY cool woud be for Citrix to get with it and create a Mobile website at say m.citrix.com that users could easily download the client to their smartphone devices as well as read news, etc about Citrix on their device.

Our company uses Blackberry devices extensively. From what I understand the iPhone is going to have a difficult entry into the enterprise due to the high costs along with the encryption not being robust. So that will probably keep us in the Blackberry area for a bit.

What I would like to see is if Blackberry comes out with their Thunder device (and if it holds true to their promises) that a client would be developed for it.

We need to be able to manage a lot of our IT infrastructure remotely. If I can do a majority of my tasks via Citrix I would be thrilled. I’m already publishing a bunch of apps to our people that allows them to remotely administer from the nether regions. But this would free us up quite a bit and allow for us to publish normal applications such as Office, etc. to mobile users. This would be a heck of a lot better than the native functionality.

Our clients especially the CEOs always tend to want what others have. So that means if a CEO of a client sees a colleague with something that he/she sees as better than what they have, then they want it. From there, the trend usually occurs that what starts at the CEO level filters down to the employee level.

It is actually how we go about selling the benefits of Citrix and SBC computing in general, give something to the top end so they can access their information anywhere, and they quickly see the benefits. The iphone, from what I can see, is something that is driven from a want rather than a need. But that want, is generated at all levels including the top. So a CEO is going to get one of these and expect everything to work on it, including Citrix.

That’s a good way to state it ” want vs. need “. But as you point out , “want” count’s , especially if it’s the CEO . As indicated in the votes above and the iPhone thread, more of IT seems to plan to support expanding user desires.

Actually you could argue that Apple has users more long term needs in mind – supporting flash might be good in the short term, but in the long term open standards like html5 serve everyone better. It’s just that to get to a better place eventually takes some pain right now.

we are remote users of citrix we have no office other than virtual. our phones are our office – but I want an iphone, my MD wants an iphone, we’ve used imate htc touch- all work fine, as does blackberry, but that doesnt change the fact that iphones are cool and we all want it. so, at the end of the day, whether it be iphone or what ever is out next year, surely citrix is obliged to keep up with trends given in IT they develop so fast, and wouldnt their compatibity come down to software?

Yes, please develop an ICA client for the iPhone. Our IT has standardized on Citrix Secure Gateways for remote access and has taken away OWA. IT has not embraced iPhones to allow VPN access since they are devices that they cannot control for patches, malware, etc. iPhones are not permitted on the internal enterprise network, but can access the public network provided for visitors and patients. Basically, Citrix is the only option for an iPhone. For those of us that are in an on-call rotation, remote access with an iPhone would be liberating. Thanks.

I am a physician and my hospital (as are most hospitals) is moving toward an electronic medical record. It already allows providers outside the hospital to access medical records via the web with the Citrix ICA client. The hospital has already enhanced its internal 802.1 system which will allow handheld devices like iphone to attach to it. I could use the iPhone to connect to the electronic medical record without fighting the nurses for a terminal–and lose.

(I accidently posted this same comment in another blog, but the comment belongs here.)

As an I.T. professional, I have seen the CEO & Sales staff loving their iphones. We already use ipsec, & vnc for emgergency remote needs. Hopefully, Citrix can BE web 2.0 & secure & so much more with xenapp WI 5 & hopefully better!!!

We are a Dental school who provides access to our EHR to all Faculty staff & students on imacs & macbook pros. We are definetly a
macintosh school, so of course, a ton of our Doctors have already asked if or when they can access our programs on their iphones. We are very

very excited that you are going to be releasing a Citrix ICA client for the iphone , however, the Mac ICA client users have been
waiting eagerly since March for the new Mac Client that we were told was coming out before the end of the year.

Everyone got excited when we seen the preview & completed the surveys, and now 8 months later, still no word. Has this been put on the
back burner now because the iphone version is getting so much press?

I just had the change to get the IPhone Citrix Received and boy was I disappointed. What were you people thinking. No dual authentication, no SSL or RSA as best as I can tell. So that basically limites the user based to local Wi-Fi users. Great for a hospital or clinical setting. But what about the other 95% of users that need to login remotely. Jez, I’ve waited for this client for almost a year and now find that I can’t sell it to my government office becuase it doesn’t provide real “on the road” access unless you want to tear down all your DNZ security. I just can’t believe it. Citrix need to remember who there user base is and has always been, travlers and people in the field who need to get access to inside servers and applications. Shame on you Citrix.

As the blog announcement and App Store description stated, this 0.9 release is a Tech Preview with stated limitations. All the items you mention are top priority for a production version. We could have waited before releasing anything but then we would lose the opportunity to share the Beta with a broader set of users and gain valuable feedback prior to future releases. Stay tuned.